One of the hurdles Michael Mann has to overcome in his lawsuit against NRO/Steyn is the tenet that public figures are expected to have a higher level of tolerance when it comes to ridicule, satire, and defamation. For that reason, because I myself am a public figure in the climate debate, I’d have little success in prosecuting a defamation claim over an article that says I have sex with farm animals (see “corrections” at bottom of linked article).
After Mann’s libel case against the National Review Online and Mark Steyn was filed, he’s recently been whining that he’s a “reluctant public figure“, perhaps to somehow shift the lawsuit in his favor.
Now, thanks to an opinion piece by Mann in the Guardian, he’s pretty much blown his own argument out of the water while managing to make a ridiculous and easily falsifiable claim about typewriter technology in an analogy on “path dependency”.
Here, Mann uses his familiarity with what “the science tells us” to effect change in public and political policy, going even so far as to challenge president Obama:
If the president won’t protect us, who is he protecting?
That challenge pretty much places him in the realm of public debate, and being a “public figure”, even if he claims it was reluctant or involuntary:
A person can become an “involuntary public figure” as the result of publicity, even though that person did not want or invite the public attention. For example, people accused of high profile crimes may be unable to pursue actions for defamation even after their innocence is established…
Source: Aaron Larson: Defamation, Libel and Slander Law. Expertlaw.com, August 2003
Mann often claims he’s been “cleared” of any wrongdoing related to his world famous “hockey stick” in later investigations. So, like “people accused of high profile crimes may be unable to pursue actions for defamation even after their innocence is established” he may be unable to make any viable defamation argument after his hockey stick became a sensation not only for the initial press, but the questions and ridicule that followed.
As a humorous aside, Mann really doesn’t know what he’s talking about with this analogy in the same Guardian article, bold mine:
A classic example is the “qwerty” keyboard layout. Even though this layout may not be the most efficient, it was the first one, and so it became the standard.
The omniscient Dr. Mann, who often positions himself as an expert in everything, botched this example badly. The QWERTY keyboard was not the first keyboard layout, and it was designed on purpose to be inefficient, to prevent a mechanical jam that frustrated early experienced typists:
The first model constructed by Sholes [4]used a piano-like keyboard with two rows of characters arranged alphabetically as follows:
- 3 5 7 9 N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
2 4 6 8 . A B C D E F G H I J K L M
The construction of the “Type Writer” had two flaws that made the product susceptible to jams. Firstly, characters were mounted on metal arms or typebars, which would clash and jam if neighboring arms were pressed at the same time or in rapid succession.[1] Secondly, its printing point was located beneath the paper carriage, invisible to the operator, a so-called “up-stroke” design. Consequently, jams were especially serious, because the typist could only discover the mishap by raising the carriage to inspect what he had typed. The solution was to place commonly used letter-pairs (like “th” or “st”) so that their typebars were not neighboring, avoiding jams. Contrary to popular belief,[2] the QWERTY layout was not designed to slow the typist down,[3] but rather to speed up typing by preventing jams.
- Rehr, Darryl, Why QWERTY was Invented
- http://www.maltron.com/media/lillian_kditee_001.pdf
- http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/221/was-the-qwerty-keyboard-purposely-designed-to-slow-typists “…at least one study indicates that placing commonly used keys far apart, as with the QWERTY, actually speeds typing, since you frequently alternate hands”
- US 79868, Sholes, C. Latham; Carlos Glidden & Samuel W. Soule, “Improvement in Type-writing Machines”, patent issued July 14, 1868
A few seconds with Google and Wikipedia as I did to verify what I believed I knew, would have helped him avoid this silly blunder, but he comes across almost always so full sure of himself, he probably thought he didn’t need to.
Dr. Mann now can add “failed typewriter expert” to his long list of curriculum vitae claims, along with being a “reluctant public figure” and Nobel Prize Winner.
h/t to Barry Woods for the Guardian link
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Perhaps ‘Querty’ could enter the lexicon to denote a dumbass…?
More on the story of competing keyboard layouts.
Guess who ran the trials indicating that the Dvorak layout was more efficient?
http://reason.com/archives/1996/06/01/typing-errors
I suspect that with the keyboard analogy he’s falling into the same trap that he does with his climate assertions – anything before computers (such as typewriters or historical accounts of really nasty weather) doesn’t count.
The Mann doesn’t make silly blunders because he’s a genius, consider yourself corrected.
And the typists and reporters at the Guardian didn’t know that? What do they have in their heads? No, no, don’t answer that – I think I can figure it out…
One of the words that can be typed on the top row of letters is “typewriter”! Sort of a 19th century “Easter egg.” 🙂
On the Dvorak keyboard, “sentient ” is on the middle row with a lot of alternating hands. Hmm, sentient on qwerty is all left hand except for “n”.
I tried using Dvorak for a while, but as a programmer I’m often typing variable names that don’t have many vowels and moving control keys around made little sense with editors that used locations of key groups, so I abandoned it.
Anthony, I have always respected you for being an advocate for science. Which ever direction the truth takes you, so be it. The problem I have with Mann is that he seems to bend things to his ideology, and advocate for government and public policy change over science. I have read some of his works like the article in the Guardian. It seems to focus on insulting political opponents instead of explaining science. He is no victim in the case with Steyn. He stepped into the ring with gloves on, but unprepared for the beating he received. Now he wants his pound of flesh via the courts.
Expecting Mann to use real facts is like expected a fish to be interested in shopping for shoes , rather amusing to think about but a total waste of time,
pwend
Just remember that if the Mann could rebut Steyn and NRO, he would not have had to resort to filing suit against them
Looks like the last efforts of the upgrade machine trashing in the molten medal in Terminator 2 Judgment Day.
Paul
If anyone is interested in why public figures have to prove malice in a defamation suit, the relevant case is called New York Times V Sullivan.
Also in a case like this the legal fees run into the millions, which is a killer on a for-profit business. Many a settlement of a bogus case comes from avoiding the hits to cash flow of the costs of taking a case to trial.
Mann uses his credibility as a public figure?
Oh dear.
“Mistakes were made…”
Your argument pwned Mann’s.
Jeez, Anthony, I clicked on the link to webcitation.org to see what barnyard-animal accusations had been made, and now I feel the need for an intense bath!!
Calling them tripe would be too kind. “Bottom-feeding scum-suckers” more appropriate.
Soldier-on in Chico. We are winning the debate.
Aren’t Nobel Laureates automatically elevated to the the status of ‘public figure’? If Mann was so reluctant to become a public figure, he should have thought twice about his self-professed and bogus claim to be a Nobel prize recipient.
What an irksome twit that Mann is.
“Involuntary public figure” my arse.
Michael Mann has made many persistent, overt acts in public view, to grab public attention and implicitly usurp everybody’s rights. He repeatedly makes public statements that self aggrandize himself and attack not merely critics, but potentially the majority of the population itself.
Many technically minded outsiders consider Michael Mann’s method of argumentation ad hominem based on aphysical, innumerate bs. IMHO, MM should be labeled a domestic terrorist. He appears to be an American citizen, so domestic rather than foreign. He appears to attempt to literally terrorize the population with spurious catastrophism to achieve political ends that are anathema both American tradition and self interest.
With Mann, one wonders where domineering hyperbole crosses over to pathological.
I notice that Mikey doesn’t provide any details on why he thinks the Keystone pipeline has anything to do with emissions. Pipelines are simply pipes that transport liquids, in this case oil.
And use less energy and certainly are responsible for fewer emisssions than the alternative means that would be used shipping the oil to China. Mann doesn’t have a case
The above link lists your connection to the public teat as your blog’s Cookie Jar ??? And their biggest criticism of you is that you backed off on some assertions that you made? What a sad and pathetic attempt to defame you.
You are doing good work Anthony. Thanks.
Michael Mann needs to score a fun house mirror off e-bay and use it, he would get a better self image of himself.
Mann telling Obama what to do and or Obama telling Mann what to do is an reverse inverse mirror projection in the [darki].
oops
dark
PS. When the dust eventually settles, I think Mann will have done far more damage to Penn State and real living breathing persons in aggregate than Jerry Sandusky.
Maurice Strawn/James Baker/William Ruckelhouse/George H.W. Bush/Al Gore
U.N./CO2 Fraud/Climate Fraud/Greed
Connections.
I believe the premier paper on QWERTY vs. Dvorak was “The Fable of the Keys” in the Journal of Law and Economics, vol. 33, no. 1, p. 1 (1990). (I read it a long time ago in a law library but I don’t see a free copy online.) If you google “Fable of the Keys Twenty Years On” you can find a free follow-up from the authors on their paper and the debate around it since then.